If a person has a bad hip, would exercise and leg lifting help it or make it worse?

There are plenty different reasons why hip pain happens. I'm not well versed on it but I know when I had hip issues, I had to go to a podiatrist to get inserts for my feet. The misalignment of my feet caused issues with my knees, hips, spine and just kept going up. It was extremely subtle but getting inserts I felt the re-aligning happening in those stages and my hips were a part of it. Now I do squats as part of my exercise rutene and I only ever exercise in my shoes with those inserts. So that fixed my squat and the hip pain that came with it.

A good exercise for hip pain... Other than squats with inserts maybe lunges, bridges or some light swing dancing?

The best exercise imo is the one you can watch a comedy you've seen before while you do it. I personally don't like leg lifts because they hurt when my body gets lazy from the stress of it and does them wrong.